Same Diagnosis, Seven Different Cures: Inside WAN-IFRA News Media Congress in Marseille
Sixty countries, three days, and one question nobody could answer: when the platforms stop sending clicks, what is journalism left with? Seven dispatches from the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress 20
1. AI training is a theft the industry has been too polite to call that
A.G. Sulzberger of the New York Times made an accounting argument: an AI model is built from talent, compute, energy and data; the first three are paid for lavishly, the fourth simply taken. The six leading AI firms are worth roughly $11 trillion between them, yet the licensing deals struck with publishers amount to less than half of 1% of that. His prescription: defend copyright, license only on sustainable terms, and act collectively rather than one frightened newsroom at a time.
Read the full report: The New York Times calls AI’s founding act a theft
2. The Guardian’s defences are formidable. Whether they hold is a different question
Katharine Viner runs The Guardian, a paper with no proprietor, no shareholders and £125m in recurring reader revenue, 83% of it now from outside the UK. By the standards of the industry, an extraordinary position. And yet the threat she named without hedging was AI’s capacity to sever the direct link between the Guardian and its readers. Her answer is SPUR, the publisher coalition launched in February with the BBC, the FT, Sky News and the Telegraph.
Read the full report: ‘Lean Into Who You Are’: Viner on the Guardian’s Bet Against AI
3. Collective action or go it alone: SPUR versus Le Monde
WAN-IFRA announced a partnership with SPUR and 30 new members moments after Louis Dreyfus of Le Monde explained why he was not signing up. Dreyfus has cut his own deals with OpenAI, Perplexity and Meta, arguing collective bargaining moves too slowly. David Buttle, an architect of SPUR, countered that a deal is the illusion of control: the platforms are paying not to be sued, not for access.
Read the full report: SPUR Goes Global: WAN-IFRA and FIPP Back Publisher Alliance
4. OpenAI showed up, listened carefully, and committed to nothing concrete
Varun Shetty and Tom Rubin from OpenAI came with a coherent message: OpenAI is not hostile to publishers, having backed more than 160 newsrooms through a WAN-IFRA accelerator and a Lenfest Institute cohort. On the value exchange, though, the answers stayed vague: no revenue sharing, publisher dashboards still only “on the list”, and aspirations where a concrete commitment was asked for.
Read the full report: OpenAI Supports Publishers Everywhere except the Balance Sheet
5. Google is still sending traffic. The exchange rate is deteriorating.
Trigger an AI overview and the top five organic results lose around 40% of their clicks, with no shelter for evergreen content equivalent to the Top Stories box. Buttle drew the structural line: Google at least trades content for traffic; ChatGPT carries no equivalent obligation, and publishers still counting page views are using the wrong instruments.
Read the full report: Google is still sending you traffic. For now.
6. Newsrooms say all the right things. 61% spend nothing on training.
FT Strategies’ Future of the Newsrooms Study, drawing on 450 responses from 86 countries, argues newsrooms are entering a “community era” where original journalism and direct reader relationships are the edge commodity AI cannot replicate. Yet the gap between rhetoric and practice is stark: despite the stated urgency, 61% of newsrooms report spending nothing on training. The most valuable hire, the session concluded, is no longer the social specialist but the journalist with deep domain knowledge and strong sources.
Read the full report: Everyone’s Talking About AI Skills. 61% of Newsrooms Spend Nothing on Training.
7. Europe is legislating for media freedom. The money has not followed.
Henna Virkkunen of the European Commission pointed to the Media Freedom Act now being enforced and a proposed €3.2bn Media Plus strand from 2028, the first structured EU support to carve out a dedicated news objective. On copyright, the Commission has opened a call for evidence on the DSM Directive and the text-and-data-mining exception. Catherine Pégard, for the French Culture Ministry, argued the decisive scale for regulation is now the European one.
What Marseille settled, and what it did not
The congress agreed on the diagnosis and nothing else. Sulzberger litigates; Viner builds coalitions; Dreyfus signs deals; Buttle sets standards; none has yet proved sufficient. Publishers left with the question they arrived with: what do you have that a chatbot cannot replace, and will readers pay for it?
Thanks Jeremy a bit gloomy but some good work being done.
Your coverage of the World Media Congress has been exceptional. Thank you - from someone who couldn't make it.